HabITS Habitat Information Tracking System

Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program and Coastal Program

HabITS Habitat Information Tracking System Branch of Habitat Restoration 703-358-2201 July 2004

Coastal Program Mission: Working with others to protect and restore coastal ecosystems for the benefit of fish, wildlife, and people.

Partners for Fish and Wildlife Program Mission: Working with private landowners to restore fish and wildlife habitat on private lands.

Program Budgets and Projects „

Coastal 2004 budget is $9,874,000 with 80 FTEs

„

Partners 2004 budget is $35,683,000 with 220 FTEs located in all 50 states and Caribbean

Where We are Working Now „

Partners for Fish and Wildlife has 50 offices located in each state and territories.

„

Coastal Program has 16 offices located in 14 states.

What is HabITS? „

Habitat Information Tracking System

What is HabITS? (cont.) „

Module within the Environmental Conservation Online System (ECOS)

Technology „

Java, JSP, HTML, XML, Struts, OJB, ArcIMS, ArcSDE, Tomcat, Apache, and Oracle. – Platform independent, MVC architecture, relational data mapping, spatial database and server. – Security compliant. – Open source projects. – Seamless data integration via XML

What is HabITS? (Cont.) „ „ „ „

Tracks habitat improvement accomplishments and technical assistance workloads Internet based (“real time”) system Geographically referenced projects Program specific: Partners, Coastal, Florida Gulf Program, Washington State Ecosystem Conservation Project

What is HabITS? (cont.) HabITS tracks contact information, agreement data, accomplishment locations, habitat areas, Partner and Service contributions, T&E species, and habitat monitoring by Office and project.

What is HabITS? (cont.) HabITS provides definitions of habitat and accomplishment types, a data dictionary, user guides, on-line tutorials, and multiple custom query and standard reports.

What Does HabITS Include? „

Habitat accomplishments – To the project level – By program – By location – By ownership (private, State, Federal, and tribal lands)

What Does HabITS Include? (cont.) – By habitat type – Special projects (e.g., Congressionally directed efforts) – By cost (Service contribution) – By partner (and partner contribution) – Relevant existing data from other systems „

Threatened and Endangered Species System

„

International Taxonomic Information System

„

Fisheries and Fish Passage Decision Support System

„

Technical assistance workloads

„

Monitoring information

What Does HabITS Include? (cont.) „ „

Interactive map component Links to external data – USGS National Map – TerraServer

Habits Accomplishments Partners for Fish & Wildlife and Coastal Program habitat improvement accomplishments in the United States FY02-04.

Why Do We Need a Tracking System? Inquiries: – – – – –

Director’s office DOI Partners NGO’s Other Federal agencies

– – – – –

Congress White House GAO OMB Service budget office

Why Do We Need a Tracking System? (cont.) „

National reporting needs: – GPRA – Budget development and justification – Strategic planning – Regional allocations – Outreach

„

We MUST account for what we do

GPRA End of Year Reports

HabITS is used to produce Program accomplishment and performance reports.

HabITS Database Snapshot July 28, 2004

•Registered HabITS users:

271

•Total Habitat Improvement projects: •Total Technical Assistance projects:

12,274 4,501

•Total partners:

6,248

•Total accomplishment sites:

23,488

What Does HabITS Do For Us? „ „ „ „ „

Replaces inconsistent reporting methods Encourages data standardization Improves accountability (OIG, OMB concerns) Analytical and predictive tool Reports available in a variety of formats to Field, Regional, and Washington Office

What Does HabITS Do For Us? (cont.) Outreach (images, maps, charts, document storage) „ Inter-agency and Intra-agency data sharing „

How do we share data? Limited custom query data exports (Excel, Oracle, Access, XML) „ Web services allow real-time data reads and report queries „

Challenges: – Technology Overhead – Connectivity – Data structure

Advantages: – Data Synchronization – Data Standards – Reach Common Goals – Infrastructure